Moore and colleagues at Intel in 1965

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Article Summary

On April 19, 1965 Electronics Magazine published a paper by Gordon Moore in which he made a prediction about the semiconductor industry that has become the stuff of legend. Known as Moore’s Law, his prediction has enabled widespread proliferation of technology worldwide, and today has become shorthand for rapid technological change. That was forty years ago - Bill Gates was nine years old, Desktop PCs were still a long way off, and notebooks, PDAs and the internet had not been thought of. Moore predicted that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would continue to double every year for the next decade. Although it was an observation rather than any attempt to formulate a scientific law, "Moore's Law" has proved remarkably accurate over the last 40 years.